Join the Guatemala
Accompaniment
Project
............................................................................................
What We've
Accomplished!
In communities, courtrooms and public protests,
NISGUA’s presence in Guatemala has enabled activists to
advance their work more
publically and effectively than they could without accompaniment. Our
specific accomplishments include:
- Guatemala Accompaniment Project (G.A.P) staff has
trained and placed more than 145 human rights monitors in returned
refugee and internally displaced communities, with human rights
organizations, and with genocide survivors since the project first
began in 1995.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2004-2009
- Since
2004, G.A.P. has accompanied
well over 70 cases involving at-risk defenders, including covering
long-term needs in over 20 communities whose members are involved in
the historic genocide cases.
- In
the last five years, accompaniers have published nearly 30 articles
in 10 local and national media sources on the issues of entrenched
impunity and
mega-development. View a sampling of accompaniers' published articles here.
- We have successfully intergrated environmental,
socio-economic, and indigenous rights into our monitoring work. In
2008-09
alone, we placed accompaniers with indigenous
groups in the San Marcos
region opposed to open-pit mining; communities in the Ixcán opposed to the Xalalá
dam; a Chorti Maya association fighting the privatization of a local
forest;
and local leaders in Coatepeque organizing communities around issues of
food
security and access to water.
- We have provided international observation to
numerous community consultations across the country in which local
indigenous
populations resoundingly rejected oil exploration,
open-pit mining and dam mega-projects.
-
We
played a central role in expanding the mandate of the umbrella
international accompaniment
organization, ACOGUATE, to include accompanying those who are at risk
for their
work defending social, economic, and cultural rights, especially as
they relate
to natural resource extraction. NISGUA’s accompaniment
related to natural
resource development in the Ixcán has served as a model that
is being
replicated in other regions.
-
Due to
heightened security concerns around the visit of the Spanish
investigative commission to Guatemala in June-July 2006 (see
information about the
Guatemalan genocide case before the Spanish courts for
background), G.A.P. mobilized sponsoring communities to support four
former accompaniers to return to Guatemala to provide "emergency
accompaniment" to communities and individuals under threat.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2000-2003
- Responding to a request from massacre survivors, in
2000 we began expanding our accompaniment work to cover nearly 20
communities of survivors and eyewitnesses who risk their lives by
charging former Guatemalan dictators Efraín Ríos
Montt and Romeo Lucas García along with their military high
commands with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
-
As the human rights situation in Guatemala declined
under the 2000-2004 FRG administration and Guatemalan social justice
organizations suffered an increasing level of threats and attacks,
city-based activists asked for international accompaniment. NISGUA
responded by forming a two-person Organization Accompaniment team in
2001 which has accompanied forensic anthropologists at exhumation
sites, lawyers and witnesses in precedent-setting legal cases, as well
as a number of prominent human rights organizations.
-
In 2000, when the UN threatened to pull its human
rights monitoring mission out of Guatemala, NISGUA accompaniment
volunteers gathered testimonies from rural communities affected by
political violence. These declarations, which were submitted to the UN,
attested to the communities’ profound desire for a continued
UN presence. As a result of our efforts, along with those of our
colleagues, the UN’s mandate was extended for an additional
three years.
- In 2002, twelve years after the stabbing of
Guatemalan
anthropologist Myrna Mack, three intellectual authors of her
assassination were brought to trial. The Myrna Mack Foundation
requested an extraordinary level of accompaniment during the legal
processes against the highest ranking military officials to ever face
trial in Guatemala for human rights issues. NISGUA responded with two
full-time accompaniers for the six-week-long process, as well as a
number of shorter-term accompaniers from Sponsoring Communities and
U.S.-based NISGUA staff.
|